Esperanza Spalding: Grammy nomination for Best New Artist

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Bassist/singer Esperanza Spalding was nominated for a Grammy in Best New Artist category. Also nominated were Justin Bieber, Drake, Florence & The Machine, Mumford & Sons. The awards will take place on Sunday, February 13 on CBS. Find the full list of nominees here.

The american Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) have announced that Esperanza Spalding is going to host Find The Beat, a progressive new television show on PBS. Find The Beat features Spalding joining with a group, a band or solo musician to explore the roots of their music.

My iPad

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Did I already mention that I love the iPad? A great gadget, especially for a musician. I’ve copied PDFs of all my Real Books and other sheet music to the iPad, so I don’t need to bring tons of books to rehearsals or gigs anymore.

But much more convinient and versatile than the Real Book PDFs is Massimo Biolcati’s iPhone App iRealBook (which I already have recommended here before). It has been updated recently to an universal app, so it now makes use of the full screen size of the iPad. I prefer the landscape view over the portrait view, because you always have the song list handy on the left side.

Making good things even better isn’t easy. But with version 3.0, iRealBook has got a player feature, which I really like. The player creates surprisingly good play along accompaniments for all the library songs (more than 900) and properly formatted user created songs in iRealBook. Don’t expect a really natural sounding band – but compared to my old Band-in-a-Box software, the “iRealBook Band” really swings and the instruments sound less artificial.

Bass2010

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In 3 days, the international double bass convention Bass2010 at Berlin/Germany will open the doors. I’ve just downloaded the schedule: 6 days, packed with concerts, recitals, masterclasses, sessions. And packed with meeting and talking to with many, many interesting people. I hope to find time to post some news from there here at my webblog, as well as at Twitter.
I’m looking forward to an exciting week at Berlin!

Bill Evans radio interview

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September 15th marks the 30th anniversary of Bill Evans’ passing. Ross Porter’s interview with Bill Evans, one of the last that Evans ever gave, can be listened online at Jazz.FM91, the canadian jazz radio station.
The conversation was recorded on May 21, 1979 at Bill Evans’ appartment at New Jersey and in his car, while on the road to Manhattan. It also features excerpts of recordings of the late Bill Evans Trio(s) with bassists Scott LaFaro, Chuck Israels and Eddie Gomez (who is mistakenly announced by Porter as Scott LaFaro in “All of You”).